Posts Tagged ‘composting’

Posted by Ed Bruske | March 15th, 2010

By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor
For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on–including their own excrement–to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial rot upon [...]

Posted by Greg Woods | March 3rd, 2010

Over the last two years of leading service projects in Washington DC, I have volunteered with several soup kitchens and homeless shelters. I respect and admire the work these organizations do. They help some of our most forgotten citizens.

One thing I love about some of these organizations is that they do great work rescuing unwanted food. For example, last year Bread for the City started its Glean for the City program, which gathers vegetables from local farms — all for free. And one of the better known examples of food-reclamation in the country was founded here in DC in 1989 — the DC Central Kitchen started off making meals for the homeless from the leftovers from the Presidential Inauguration festivals. These days, they rescue more than 600,000 pounds of food a year.

But in some cases at several service organizations, I see a large amount of food waste ends up in the trash. I often wonder: Can these organizations compost? Is there a way to ‘close the loop’ on this process, to give back to fields that produce the food? In response to these questions I raised to the DCFoodforAll Google Group, representatives from the Common Good City Farm, located near Howard University, say that the farm will start accepting compost from community members.

This may be just the start of a series of such community composting opportunities.